Onboarding checklist

When someone new joins the team:

• Create a new GitHub issue in this repository called Onboard [NewPerson] to NRRD website project team.
• View the raw source of this file.
• Copy everything below the line into the new issue's body.
• Replace NewPerson with the new person's name.
• Replace Buddy with the onboarding buddy's name.
• Delete any checklists irrelevant for the new person's skill domain.
• Submit the issue.
• Assign the issue to the person who volunteered to be the new person's Onboarding Buddy.

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In order to get [NewPerson] productively contributing to the NRRD website team, [Buddy] should help [NewPerson] complete a prescribed set of tasks that will bring them up to speed.

Directions

Buddy: If you can’t complete any of the items on your checklist personally, you are responsible for ensuring that someone with the correct access completes that item.

New Person: Take judicious notes on what about this onboarding process or the NRRD website is confusing or frustrating. If you notice a problem (especially with things like documentation), you are more than welcome to fix it! At the very least, please share this information with your buddy so we can make the team/platform better. You can also file issues and pull requests as soon as you feel comfortable doing so.

Learn about the project background and how the team works

• Read the Product Framing document
• Read about the current status of the project on the homepage of the wiki
• Buddy: Add NewPerson to the project team list
• Read the Basics for making distributed work work
• Meet with the Product Manager for an introduction to project routines, expectations, and rituals
  • Discuss NRRD project meetings: what they are, how they are run, and how the new person is expected to participate at each
  • Review the most recent NRRD project roadmap to get a high-level view of recently-completed, in-progress, and upcoming features

Get access to tools and services

• Buddy: Ask the 18F team PM to invite NewPerson to the #nrrd-partners slack channel
  • NewPerson: Accept the slack invitation via email, and set up your Slack account with 2-factor authentication. Set up your profile with your name, location, and any other information you wish to provide.
• Create a GitHub account that you can use for government work
  GitHub is a platform for collaborative web development. The NRRD website’s repository is currently housed under 18F’s GitHub organization, but in the future it will be transferred to ONRR. While it’s under 18F, accounts must follow 18F’s GitHub profile guidelines in order for team members to be added to it.
  • Follow 18F’s setup instructions to create a GitHub account, or link an existing account to your government work.
  • Let the Product Manager know when your account has been created, and what your username is. Ask them to add you as a contributor to the project repository so that you can make contributions, and to add you to the DOI GitHub organization.
  • Subscribe to the doi-extractives-data repository (through the GitHub watch feature) to get notifications of project activity.
• Log in to Waffle with your GitHub account so that you can view the project planning board
  Select the “Public Repos Only” option when prompted to log in. We use Waffle as a project management tool to track tasks. Waffle connects to GitHub and displays the issues from the the project’s repository in columns that show its progress—Icebox, Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, In Progress, Awaiting Review, or Done.